I am struck by the contrast between two different stories on the subject of Christian unity that I noted yesterday. The stories are of two groups, ostensibly seeking full union with the Holy See. One is a group that professes to be part of the Church although there exists some degree of mutually imposed separation. With that said, this group professes to be working ardently for the goal of unity This is the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The other is a group that is clearly outside the church, a splinter group originally part of the Church of England that split from unity hundreds of years ago. They now seek full union with the Holy See. This is the Traditional Anglican Communion.
The first story (as I linked on SummorumPontificum.net) was about the response of the SSPX to the revised prayer for the Jews as promulgated by Pope Benedict just a while ago. Pope Benedict recently made a huge gesture toward the society when he released his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. This was one of the major “conditions” set by the SSPX as a pre-requisite to unity. When the Pope, for his own prudential reasons, decided to amend the prayer for the Jews, many in the traditionalist camps and those not so inclined turned their eyes to the SSPX to see how they would respond. Would they respond to the Pope’s decision with humility, submission, and respect and accept the Pope’s judgment on this matter or not? The answer, while not official, seems to be not. There have been some reported comments by Bishop Fellay seems to indicate that they will not be using the new prayer. This does not mean, as some would suggest, that this proves once and for all that the SSPX is schismatic. It doesn’t. What it does prove is that we have a long way to go to achieve the desired unity.
The other story I wrote about here yesterday. This story is about the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC). A break-away group of Anglicans who have come to realize what they have lost when they lost unity with Rome. Now they want it back. To this end, the Bishops of the TAC reportedly all signed a copy of the Catechism and sent a letter to the Holy See seeking full, corporate, and sacramental union with Rome. Since they have made the request, they await a response with promised silence and in what the Primate of the TAC referred to as “a prayer filled quietness.” Acknowledging that the path to unity requires toughness, patience, and above all humility.
As I look at the public disposition of these two groups that seek unity with Rome, I must admit that I have greater hope for the group that is on the outside than the one on the inside. I know that many people can and will defend the various SSPX positions from a moral or legal standpoint. I am no expert and so I will not claim that the SSPX is cutting itself off with such actions and responses. I suspect that many of their “demands” may be legitimate and I definitely have a soft spot for them as I too love the ancient liturgy and despise modernism. But my money, right now, is on the Traditional Anglican Communion. If you care to know why, my answer is very simple. It’s the humility, stupid.
February 21, 2008 at 9:45 pm
In response to Mr. Archbold, that really depends upon what your wife has asked you to do. If she asks you to take your children out of a Catholic school on the grounds that her Jewish friends are offended by that school, you might very well refuse out of love for your wife and your children.
The important thing is that a valid refusal of legitimate authority can only be justified if the motive is good and holy. If the motive is defendable in principle, we should assume, out of love for its agent, that his will is good. And we should then try to persuade that person that he or she has made a mistake, while being open to persuasion that we are the mistaken party. But that’s only if *we* love the other party; and being open to the possibility that it is we who are wrong, well, that requires real humility. Humble statements are somewhat less than that.
P.K.T.P.
February 21, 2008 at 9:45 pm
“Think she’ll buy it?”
Only one way to find out. Get back to us on it… from whatever hotel you’re staying at that night.
February 21, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Matthew Archbold, who is arch-bold indeed, writes this:
“Oh. The TAC is poor? Forget them then. Jesus never wanted anything to do with the poor and neither will I.”
Where is this coming from? I never suggested that we should reject them on the grounds that they are poor. Nor did I ever suggest that their poverty was their sole motive for wanting a union with Rome. But I am suggesting that it is a very strong motive. There’s nothing wrong with that motive. It is completely moral. But it is not the *same* as a motive of humility.
Before you misinterpret me yet further, note that I do not question their humility. But I suggest that it is not their only motive. Of course they want a union with Rome. Right now, most of them have nowhere to worship and little recourse to clerical ministration. They need help, and we should oblige them.
But humble words alone do not demonstrate that humility is their sole motive or their primary one. The idea that they are patiently and humbly waiting for the Holy See elides the fact that they are on their knees for other reasons, such as destitution.
P.K.T.P.
February 21, 2008 at 10:21 pm
It’s Destitution, Stupid.
It is the Year of Our Lord 1976. After some liberal Anglican ministers have already jumped the gun (sound familiar: cf. Communion in the hand for us), the Anglican Church of Canada finally votes to admit women to its priesthood. This is possible, since its priesthood isn’t valid in the first place.
A group of Anglicans who are traditionalist says, “No way, José. This is finally the straw that broke the camel’s back.” So they leave, forming the Anglican-Catholic Church of Canadam (the oldest body in the TAC). The ‘Catholic’ in the name refers to the Creed, not to any hope for re-union with Rome.
A year later, an American group leaves the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. for similar reasons. After three schisms, it eventually becomes known as the Anglican Church in America. In the 1980s, several others from other countries come together, and they form the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC). They now have twelve national bodies in all, plus one lone parish in New Zealand under their general primate.
Now, let us engage in some fantasy. We can pretend to be, um, David Alexander (why not? I rather like the chap.) Let us suppose that millions of Anglicans had joined us, splitting the Anglican Communion in two over the issue of women’s ordination. Let us suppose that the traditionalist victors got to keep the property of parishes where they were the majority. Let us suppose that they managed to pull sixty or seventy per cent of the property out of the now-liberal Anglican bodies. Does anyone here honestly believe that such a successful TAC would now be on its knees begging to be accepted as a Catholic uniate body? Not a chance. They would be trumphant.
But what really happened? Well, except for Northern India, they got zero property. And because their particular denomination had gone wildly liberal (and these are wealthy liberals, remember), they got very little support. Cast off by all as the off-scouring of the world, they had to go from desert to cave and from pillar to post, destitute and in need, to try to re-build.
But they are dying, ladies and gentlemen. Most of their members are over the age of 60. Young Anglicans in North America, Western Europe, and Australia, tend to come from very liberal families these days. Those who really do want back some religion join the evangelical branch of Anglicanism, which is foregin to most in the TAC. Thanks to an acceptance of artificial contraception de facto, most Anglicans of all stripes are dying.
Not only are their members literally dying of old age and leaving no successors, but rift and division have afflicted the TAC, especially in the U.S.A., where three competing bodies have excommunicated one another. They have few churches, few priests, few adherents, and little authority to ensure unity.
Without the unity that can only come from Rome now (as Constantiniple has proved unable to provide it among the Orthodox!), they are finished. So they are on their knees, humbly waiting for the Pope’s approbation. They are humble all right. To a great extent, they have been humbled by circumstances.
Now, of course, if Rome lets them in, the future looks very bright indeed. But I’ll save that for another post.
P.K.T.P.
February 21, 2008 at 11:33 pm
More on the TAC
Bloggers [is that a word?] have commented on the TAC. One problem in regard to it is that, well, there are forces in the Church who do not want the TAC. These are the Catholic liberals. For example, about two months ago, Walter Cardinal Kasper warned that the TAC’s entry into the Church would be difficult. There are many obstacles, he said. If there are not, I’m sure that he’ll dream some up, although he is about to turn 75, and rumour has it that he has already submitted his resignation as President of the Council for Promoting Christian unity. How ironic that someone with that title would want to obstruct Christian unity!
Why don’t the liberals want the TAC? One reason is that they just don’t want more conservative people in the Church. But there is a much more important reason. They also don’t want them because the entry of the TAC would infuriate the regular Anglicans, including their leaders in England, America, and so on.
But why should the Archlaic of Canterbury care? After all, the TAC is tiny and has little property; it is poor. Ah, yes, but it is its potential for stupendous growth as a uniate church that worries Rowan Williams and that Schorri Woman. That would be growth at the expense of, um, the regular Anglicans. And regular Anglicans, who are radical liberals, are œcumenical buddies of, um, liberal Catholics, Catholics such as Kasper, Mahony, Lehmann, Daneels. Well, you get the picture.
Now let’s put that picture in focus. Already, 800 Anglican ministers have said that they will join the TAC the instant it joins Rome. Of course, many of these are exaggerating and forgetting where their pensions are coming from. But even 200 would be a huge exodus. Inmage the effect if the 30 ministers in the TAC in England were suddently joined by 200 or 300 more in a day?
Far more important is the problem of the Global South Anglicans. These are archconservative Anglicans who dominate the Anglican churches in the Third World. They are a very large per centage of the whole and, unlike First World Anglicans, their numbers of growing. In fact, they are growing very quickly, while decline is just as fast in the West. It is now a contest to see if the Third World Anglican churches can grow at a faster rate than that at which the First World Anglicans are declining!
Take Nigeria, for example. Among worldwide Anglican bodies, it is the second most populous, after the Church of England. It has about 18 million Anglicans, and their ‘primate’ (not a monkey), Archbishop Akinola, has already suggested that he’ll take all 18 million into a uniate church under Rome. Imagine that. 400,000 Anglicans join Rome. A week later, they are joined by 18 million others.
But it gets better. The Anglican churches in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Malaysia and Southern America are all set to join a uniate TAC (i.e. one under the Pope). Poof! One day, they’re Anglican. The next day, they’re Catholic with an Anglican style.
I don’t think that it would happen instantly but it would happen soon. It would mean the end of the Anglican Communion as a noticeable international religious organisation. Kasper and Mahony et al. don’t want that! They certainly don’t want a huge infusion of traditional and conservative Anglicans into Catholicism! That would mean that millions of Anglicans would escape taking their liberal medicine, medicine charitably forced down their throats to make them more ‘modern’ and ‘advanced’. WE mustn’t have that!
So, we should pray that the TAC will be successful in its plea for union with the Pope.
P.K.T.P.
February 21, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I hate to jump in the mix too much here… but honestly poverty and agining alone does not lead to Rome. Otherwise there would be a stampede of a dozen other micro-denominations that are far less well off in the Continuning Anglican/Old Catholic world.
As a matter of fact, there are a few micro-Lutheran denoms that have made similar overtures… The one I am thinking of off the top of my head though, is a little too “do-it-yourself” with a whole lot of clergy (way too many bishops) and way too few faithful. “Hobby” comes to mind.
Another splintering group that once enjoyed a little more success in numbers and organization is the Charismatic Episcopal Church. Several of their clergy (including one “archbishop”) went Roman. But in the wake of the amagisterial disaster that was the original denomination, at least two new denominations were formed in addition to the parishes that stayed with the CEC… And several parishes went “Continuing Anglican” while at least two went “Western Rite Orthodox” under the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese. I digress…
Opportunities abound to remain non-Catholic, to re-align, to go quietly even…
So I a can’t quite be as pragmatic as saying “their backs were agasint the wall” so to speak. If denominationalism in Protestantism has taught us anything, those with a view to NOT go to Rome can always find somewhere else to go.
Now, what Rome will do with them (and I very much DOUBT they would be brought in as a corporate whole!) is anyone’s guess. My first best guess would be a Motu-like arrangement for wider opportunities to use the Anglican-use Book of Divine Worship already in place for convert congregations. But I definately think “sui juris” self-governing “uniate” status, with perennial rights to married clergy (something even Eastern Catholics outside their traditional homelands in the west have not secured) is out.
Honestly, I think a good part of whatever response is offered will hinge on creating an arrangement applicable to ex-Anglican-types world-wide. At some point more Anglicans still are going to realize that their quests for “alternate oversight” from the Southern Cone or Africa is just a pipe dream… and it will not save, protect or preserve them from the madness of modernity – only forestall it.
WHEN that happens, will there be enough of them left to bother with special arrangements?
February 21, 2008 at 11:44 pm
You bring up a good point! Again, the way I see it (a humble blogger of no importance or influence, my dad doesn’t even read my blog…)
Well the way I see it, more than anything what would be most likely in a pro-TAC move would be the creation of a personal prelature or some such, perhaps even side-stepping local ordinaries who in some places have adamnantly refused to apply the pastoral provision to those seeking it.
I think B16 is pretty smart… He knows which end is up, when it comes to dialogue with “Global North Anglicanism” that ship has sailed. Why ANY tithe money gets wasted on Catholic bishops meeting up with the Anglicans for talks anymore, I cannot say. Perhaps they think that it could lead to some conversion privately? Corporate re-union (even if they agreed to re-ordination) is OUT….
February 22, 2008 at 1:11 am
To A Simple Sinner:
It is true that small groups such as the TAC splinter and fracture and amalgamate and re-amalgamate. However, they are all mostly facing extinction. The TAC does have its back to the wall. But it is also much larger internationally than most of the others, and it has a huge potential for growth. Others might be willing to accept eventual extinction; it wants to avoid this.
With the greatest of respect, I must disagree with your view that the TAC will not be admitted as a uniate body. It has proposed “full, corporate and sacramental unity” and that is clearly the road preferred by this pontificate. Its primate-general is also a good friend of Pope Benedict XVI. There is absolutely no question that the Pope will try, at least, to bring them in as one body. Rome has signalled this. Ironically, it even fits into Cardinal Kasper’s heretical theory of convergence!
You are correct, however, about the matter of the marriage of clerics. But there are cracks in the Eastern façade. The 1929 rule for the Eastern churches has now been set aside. I ought to know. The former priest at my local Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church was the first priest to be both married and ordained in Canada. There are now two or three others.
A larger problem will be TAC’s married bishops. TAC, however, has already declared that it will accept whatever Rome determines on this. To paraphrase its primate-general, who is married himself, If this will not be permitted, I will hang up my crozier and retire as a simple priest of a uniate TAC, taking my fishing rod with me.
I am sure that Mr. Archbold will seize on this paraphrase to support his argument on humility. That’s fine. I have to give him something left to assert in peace.
I think that Rome will allow TAC to keep its married priests and deacons but then tighten current rules so that men who are Latin Catholics–even converts–may never enter a uniate TAC for ordination.
On the matter of married bishops, I’m not sure what Rome will do. Constantinople accepts Anglicans’ married bishops as legitimate, whereas Moscow does not. So the orthodox are divided on this themselves (although all Orthodox agree, of course, that a male can be both a valid bishop and a married man. They are divided only on whether or not Anglican orders are valid in the first place.)
I’m not sure that Rome will want married bishops because, in the past several centuries, only the Assyrian Nestorians had them, and they gave them up about 250 years ago. In other words, Rome would be making a huge exception having an effect on all of Christendom.
Another problem for the TAC will be accepting the Sacrament of Penance as individual confession. TAC certainly has this but many of its members, given their background, simply do not repair to the confessional (of course, the same is true for us!).
TAC will also have to drop its devotion to ‘St. Charles the Martyr’. He died for the faith but, unfortunately, it was the wrong one!
TAC now accepts all Catholic dogma.
P.K.T.P.
February 22, 2008 at 1:17 am
Simple sinner:
Please avoid suggesting or even hinting at a “personal prelature”. That is what Opus Dei has and, given Canon 297, it would be a huge disaster for ANY traditional group. Speak instead of a personal apostolic administration. It is equivalent in law to a diocese for its own subjects. Now, you’re talking!
In the case of the TAC, however, it would not be a personal apostolic adminisration but a uniate church, like that of the Ukrainians or Maronites. It would be a sui juris church. This has already been decided, I’m told. But the delay is caused over the issue of marriage and ordination. And it goes further than my last post suggests. For example, they have clerics who were Catholic, were ordained as Catholic priests, defected to the TAC, got consecrated as TAC bishop. They have cases of divorced men who are clerics. It’s complicated, but then that’s why we have reams and reams of canonists at Rome!
P.K.T.P.
February 22, 2008 at 2:51 pm
P.K.T.P.
“When a Pope does something that undermines the Church, it is not humility but stupidity to follow him blindly. God does not want this. He wants us to use the brains He gave unto us!”
My question for you is: Will the new Good Friday prayer for the Jews undermine the Church? In what way? What does your superior brain tell us is the right course?–disobey the Pope…Right…That seems the best course, and the most humble.
February 22, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’m wondering about this myself. Leaving aside the prudential judgment of this decision, EXACTLY what is dangerous to the Faith about the revised prayer? What does our answer say about the protection the Holy Father enjoys from erring in matters of Faith and Morals? Or must he speak “ex cathedra” every time he so much as gives a catechism lesson?
February 22, 2008 at 10:01 pm
To bnwied:
My superior brain tells me that it is not so much the text of the prayer as the precedent it sets that undermines Holy Church. Supreme Pontiffs do not alter the Work of the Holy Ghost at the behest of infidels who don’t believe their even is a Holy Ghost.
Secondly, I have never asked anyone to disobey the Pope; rather, I have pointed out that the change DOES NOT REQUIRE us to use the new prayer; in fact, it allows us to use the old one. Read what I write and then you, too, will have a superior brain.
P.K.T.P.
February 22, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Dear Mr. Alexander:
What does the new prayer have to do with faith and morals? Has the Holy Father found the old prayer to be deficient in terms of faith and morals. He has not, or do you also have a secret window into souls, along with Mr. Archbold? I have never seen any suggestion from the Sacred Magisterium that this was about faith or morals.
But to answer your question without being fully thorough (no space for that here), documents of the Holy See on faith and morals have different degrees of authority requiring differing degrees of assent.
Not all infallible statements need to be ex cathedra statements. How neo-conservatives, who have so little respect for tradition, love that Hobbesian absolutist view! Read Vatican I, the better Vatican Council, and you will see that the ordinary Magisterium is also infallible when the Churh repeats something that has been taught always, everywhere, and by all bishops united to the successors of Blessed Peter.
In other cases, we have a right to withhold assent but not to dissent. This means that we cannot will disagreement, but we are not bound to will agreement either. In such cases, if we find that we do not agree with the Magisterium (a finding, not a willed rebellion), we are to pray for understanding so that we may have a perfect adherence. But until that adherence is there, we should not attack the Church’s positions in public but maintain silence. An example of this would be the teaching contained in Rerum Novarum, the first social encyclical.
Other matters carry less authority. For example, the Church only favours the view that there is a limbo of infants. We can disagree openly provided that we should proper respect for the Church’s preferred view.
Very few people realise that the documents of Vatican II are NOT infallible except when they repeat teachings that were held to be infallible before Vatican II was called. This is because the fathers at the Council declined (and sometimes even refused) to define the terms, a condition necessary to make a doctine infallible. Both popes of the Council pointed out that Vatican II was a pastoral council, not a dogmatic one. That means that we are not bound to adhere to any new doctrines found in it.
I get the feeling that you are a young man and new at this. Am I correct?
P.K.T.P.
February 22, 2008 at 10:40 pm
From Broadcast News:
Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.
Jane Craig: No. It’s awful.
PKTP:”I get the feeling that you are a young man and new at this. Am I correct?”
Wow! Talk about condescension. I hope PKTP is a young man and is new to this. That way there is some hope he may yet grow out of it. You are not likely to win many hearts and minds the way you talk to people.
A.N.O.N.
February 22, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I repeat to PKTP the name of this post. “It’s the Humility, Stupid.”
February 23, 2008 at 1:30 am
“I get the feeling that you are a young man and new at this. Am I correct?”
I’m fifty-three years old. It’s old enough to remember when “the Old Mass” was just “the Mass.” It’s old enough to bristle when some punk-ass kid who wasn’t even BORN in 1962 tries to tell me how not to respond from the pews, and risks getting b****-slapped in front of the wife and kids. How’s that for old???
If the change to the prayer does not endanger the Faith, then the Holy Father is within his authority. No, the original did NOT fall from the sky courtesy of the Holy Spirit (as you appeared to suggest elsewhere). The “organic development” of the sacred liturgy is not like a potted plant; there is a human element. I can give you all kinds of reasons why I would have preferred the Pope did NOT change the prayer. But they don’t matter. He is not required to check in with me on these things
And sooner or later, the Holy Father is going to do something that you or I or some yutz from the SSPX is going to prefer he did differently. But we can’t nitpick through the rules like some anal-retentive Talmudic scholar, over how to get around having to comply with something. (Ironic that I’d use Talmudic scholars, eh?) Nor can we go starting a jihad over every little thing.
And in the larger scheme of things, this is little. It does not endanger the Faith, and it calls for the conversion of the Jews. Otherwise, the Jews would have been happy with it. Since they’re not, it must hit close enough to home.
February 23, 2008 at 1:34 am
Oh, and another thing… old enough to already know most of what you told me about the teaching authority of the Holy Father.
February 23, 2008 at 1:54 am
Sorry, my apologies, Mr. Alexander. No, I was also alive and well long before 1962. I did not mean to be rude. I only noticed that you were asking some rather basic questions about things such as degrees of authority, so I thought that you must be new to all of this. Perhaps I simply assume too much. Not everyone is expected to have an extensive knowledge of such theological matters, and the subject is complex, after all.
No offence intended.
P.K.T.P.
February 23, 2008 at 2:14 am
David Alexander wrote:
“If the change to the prayer does not endanger the Faith, then the Holy Father is within his authority.”
I never suggested otherwise. I have explained my position on this time and again, but you don’t seem to get it. I never claimed that he lacked the authority. I claimed that (1) the change was regrettable and a mistake and (2) we are not required in law to use the prayer, and nor should we. Why is it that you keep failing to address these very simple arguments? I can’t understand it. Under the current law, even a diocesan priest can, in an extreme case, avoid the revision simply by not offering Good Friday prayers at all. Good Friday is not among the days he must offer them.
No, the original did NOT fall from the sky courtesy of the Holy Spirit (as you appeared to suggest elsewhere). The “organic development” of the sacred liturgy is not like a potted plant; there is a human element.
(2) I think I know a good deal about what organic development means, having read scores of books by liturgiologists (not mere liturgists). It means that forms grow by usage from existing forms and are later given approbation by legitimate authority. Of course, there’s a human element. The Holy Ghost is the author of our liturgy, but He works through human hands, just He did in the case of the Scriptures. That is why we Catholics do not believe in ‘sola scriptura’. There are three sources of knowledge about God: Scripture, Nature and Tradition. Organic growth in the liturgy is an example of the third.
This means that, in the Catholic Church, we do not dream up liturgical prayers; rather, they come from older forms and the changes have precedents. Try reading “Quo Primum Tempore” and notice the very different attitude of Pope St. Pius V in regard to the Work of the Holy Ghost, which he dared not touch. Next term, I am thinking of making my students read this in Latin and then translate it.
It is true that the Pope has the authority to make small changes, such as the 2008 revision. It is not the case that he has the authority completely to discard an established form or rite. But that is beside the main point here.
While the Pope does have the authority to make small changes, he should avoid this, according even to Vatican II, when the good the Church does not genuinely require it. Changes, especially additions to or revisions of established liturgical texts, are traditionally made only to protect the faithful from some new heresy or to clarify something essential (e.g the Prayer of Justinian added to the Byzantine Rite).
What we have in the case in hand is a Pope who set an even worse precedent–even worse than dreaming up or concocting a liturgical prayer. We have the first case ever of a Pope who amends the Work of the Holy Ghost specifically at the behest–nay, the demand–of infidels who do not believe that there is a Holy Ghost.
I have repeated this many times now. Nobody seems to be able to understand my point. People keep responding as if I had written something else. Hence my frustration. What is the problem here?
P.K.T.P.
February 23, 2008 at 2:29 am
“I claimed that (1) the change was regrettable and a mistake and (2) we are not required in law to use the prayer, and nor should we. Why is it that you keep failing to address these very simple arguments?”
Because I have to wade through the morass that is everything else you have written. If you’d confine yourself to the central argument, my eyes wouldn’t glaze over so much. Now then…
(1) the change was regrettable and a mistake…
Regrettable, perhaps. But who are we to say it was a mistake? Other than our own opinion?
(2) we are not required in law to use the prayer, and nor should we.
If a decree was legitimate issued that says we are to use it, then we are to use it. No, Good Friday is not a day of obligation. But if a priest is celebrating the Presanctified Liturgy on that day in the Extraordinary Form, and the Holy See obliges him to use it, he must as a matter of obedience use it.
“We do not dream up prayers.” Well, where do they come from? Like manna from heaven, or does some mere mortal at some point in time compose them? Let’s make this simple: YES OR NO???
Authority over the sacred liturgy is with the Apostolic See. Now, what part of that don’t YOU get?